Census staffers received text messages Friday saying that a previously announced Oct. 5 "target date" for collecting data was no longer "operative" and that counters should continue collecting data until Oct. 31, the bureau said in a statement. The messages were sent after U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh, in a late Thursday order, threatened to issue sanctions against Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross if the bureau he oversees continued defying the terms of an injunction ordering it to push back its timeline.
"Defendants' dissemination of erroneous information; lurching from one hasty, unexplained plan to the next; and unlawful sacrifices of completeness and accuracy of the 2020 Census are upending the status quo, violating the Injunction Order, and undermining the credibility of the Census Bureau and the 2020 Census," Judge Koh wrote. "This must stop."
Ross signed off on the Oct. 5 date after staff informed him it would allow him to present his final report for congressional apportionment to President Donald Trump by Dec. 31 rather than in April 2021 as previously planned, according to emails cited by the California court.
The decision came despite concerns raised by staff that moving up the target date would hurt the accuracy of the count, particularly in "lagging substate areas, such as tribal areas, rural areas, and hard-to-count communities," according to the emails.
"As I prepare to make the decision, I would like to make sure that I understood correctly that your team's opinion is that if we stay in the field beyond October 5, we would not be able to meet the statutory deadline of December 31," Ross wrote on Sept. 28 to Deputy Director Ron Jarmin and other senior bureau officials.
The bureau announced the decision in a tweet the same day, as well as in a one-sentence press release sent even before Ross' email signing off on the updated timeline. This suggested a "concerted" effort to set a date the bureau had been enjoined on Sept. 24 from setting, according to Judge Koh.
"Defendants' clear, fast, and concerted advertising of the October 5 date stands in stark contrast with Defendants' chaotic, dilatory, and incomplete compliance with the injunction order," the judge wrote.
The agency's decision came over the objections of the bureau's associate director for field operations, Timothy Olson, who warned that "it is ludicrous to think we can complete 100% of the nation's data collection earlier than 10/31 and any thinking person who would believe we can deliver apportionment by 12/31 has either a mental deficiency or a political motivation," according to statements shared with the Government Accountability Office and cited by the court.
Census officials also continued to tout a deadline of Sept. 30 on the official 2020 census website until Sept. 28 — four days after the injunction explicitly ordered it to move the deadline back, Judge Koh wrote. Several census supervisors then contributed to what the court described as "misinformation and confusion nationwide," according to Thursday's ruling.
The bureau's regional director in Dallas, for example, sent a message to census counters two days after the injunction was issued, falsely claiming: "Even though the courts have made a decision; nothing has changed."
"Our deadline to count everyone is still September 30, 2020. I will keep everyone as updated as possible," the regional director added, according to Judge Koh's order. "DO NOT SPREAD RUMORS, OR MAKE ASSUMPTIONS. STICK TO THE FACTS! The facts are, we are still moving forward with original plan to finish by September 30, 2020."
Bureau officials later admitted that the regional director's text message had been sent in error, according to court papers.
Judge Koh's Sept. 24 injunction followed a temporary restraining order she granted groups challenging a "replan" the bureau floated in August that aimed to compress about 8½ months of data collection and processing into just 4½ months. Plaintiffs include the National Urban League, Los Angeles, Chicago, the Navajo Nation and the Gila River Indian Community.
Representatives for the Census Bureau did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment. The other parties involved in the case were not immediately available for comment.
The National Urban League; the League of Women Voters; the Black Alliance for Just Immigration; San Jose, California; King County, Washington; the Navajo Nation; and Harris County, Texas, and Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia are represented by Melissa Sherry, Sadik Huseny, Steve Bauer, Rick Bress, Ann Robinson, Amit Makker, Shannon D. Lankenau, Tyce R. Walters, Genevieve P. Hoffman and Gemma Donofrio of Latham & Watkins LLP, Jon M. Greenbaum, Ezra D. Rosenberg, Dorian L. Spence, Ajay P. Saini, Maryum Jordan and Pooja Chaudhuri of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Wendy R. Weiser, Thomas P. Wolf and Kelly M. Percival of the Brennan Center for Justice.
The Navajo Nation is also represented by Doreen McPaul and Jason Searle of the Navajo Nation Department of Justice. San Jose is also represented by Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel.
The Gila River Indian Community is represented by Donald R. Pongrace and Dario J. Frommer of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.
Los Angeles is represented by Michael N. Feuer, Kathleen Kenealy, Danielle Goldstein and Michael Dundas of the city attorney's office.
Chicago is represented by its own Rebecca Hirsch and by Lily E. Hough and Rafey Sarkis Balabanian of Edelson PC.
Salinas, California, is represented by Christopher A. Callihan and Michael Mutalipassi of the city attorney's office.
The federal government is represented by Jeffrey Bossert Clark, David Morrell, Alexander K. Haas, Diane Kelleher, Brad P. Rosenberg, August Flentje, Alexander V. Sverdlov and M. Andrew Zee of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division.
The suit is National Urban League et al. v. Wilbur L. Ross Jr. et al., case number5:20-cv-05799, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
--Additional reporting by Andrew Westney and Jennifer Doherty. Editing by Kat Laskowski.
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